Intervention

Intervention: Coley

Coley is a timber cutter that is addicted to crystal meth. He has three young children, two girls and a boy and a wife that he affects everyday with his crystal meth abuse. Throughout the episode Coley locks himself in the garage, so he can snort powder form of crystal meth without his children being directly in front of it. Coley thinks that if he locks himself in the garage his children do not see his behaviors. Coley’s addiction stemmed from his childhood where his mother was a speed addict and alcoholic and allowed Coley to do drugs and drink with her throughout his young teens and late adult hood. After Coley married his wife and his wife recognized the problem was connected to when he was at his mother’s home she asked that he not be involved with his mother. Coley does this and shortly after his mother dies. This leads Coley to more drug abuse and his addiction becomes worse, due to the guilt he feels for hurting his mother and the guilt from the fact that she died alone. Coley somewhat blames his wife for this. Coley put his family in great danger with the bills not being paid and him putting off jobs for something he thinks will become his gold mine and turns out not to.

Throughout the episode I felt a great deal of sadness for the children that had to be involved in his mess of an addiction. Each child was suffering in their own way because he refused to quit crystal meth and would come home late at night therefore spending no time with his family. I think the child that was affected the greatest was his son. His son repeatedly said that he missed his father, and how the used to go fishing and spend time together. His son needs him the most to look up to, count on and teach him how to be a man. His daughter was so hurt that she did not even want to talk on camera about it. She just wanted the father that addiction took away. I was heartbroken seeing these kids have to hurt and go through the experience they did because there really is no fixing or turning back time. They will always remember that time in their lives when they felt they had no father.

I also felt extremely bad for Coley’s wife because she had married the man of her dreams, she described as a kind and giving man that was determined and not on drugs when she married him. I could see that she too felt guilt for his mother’s death and that she feared that Coley resented her for not wanting him to be around his mother. I felt like she had so much built up guilt and sadness that when he came home high and late that she had no emotional or physical energy to fight with Coley and to an extent I think that she was extremely passive and she was an enabler. I think that on the other hand she was extremely strong person, to be able to keep her family together because so many fall apart because of addiction.

To me Coley was extremely selfish and somewhat naпve. I think that the fact that he thought if he was locked in a room and doing his drugs that it had no affect on his children or on his wife was to me stupidity. Children are so much smarter than that. If they knew that their father had an addiction and was abusing drugs than they are fully aware of his behavior and it was unfair of him to make such judgments. I also thought he was extremely selfish in the beginning of the intervention meeting claiming that they set him up and that they were attacking him. I felt like he did not want to go at first claiming that there was no one to take care of his home or job or family, but in reality even when he was home he was not doing those things.